🍪 Elon vs OpenAI

Top of the mornin’ to ya, friends. This is Bite Sized Beta. We’re like the TurboTax of tech news, except free and less annoying. Just out here makin’ it easy to file all the best stuff in your brain.

We got a lot on deck today, so let’s get to the good stuff.

In the oven this week:

• 🎭 Drama at OpenAI
• 💸 Crypto’s heaping plate of justice
• 🍪 Cookie crumbs: 4 bite-sized headlines
• 🗳️ Poll of the week: are the normies actually using AI?
• 🍫 Chocolate chips: our 3 favorite finds of the week
• 😂 Snickerdoodles: memes for the weekend

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FRESHLY BAKED: OPENAI 🥊 ELON

Elon and Sam Altman have been acting like divorced parents lately, and we’re watching like it’s the final tennis match at the US Open.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Elon, Sam, and a gang of other smart guys founded OpenAI as a non-profit back in 2015.

Things seemed to be going well, but in 2018, Elon randomly stepped down and cited a conflict of interest between OpenAI and Tesla, since both would compete for the same talent as Tesla developed AI for autonomous driving.

Sure, makes sense.

But this week, it was reported that Elon actually stepped down after a power struggle at the company.

The short version of what happened:

Elon: OpenAI is way behind Google now. Let me run this joint and be CEO.

Sam and the other founders: um, no.

Elon: Alright, deuces. Me and my money are walkin’ that way 👉🏽

Without Elon’s funding, OpenAI needed cash, and decided to create a for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI in 2019. They also took a ton of money billions from Microsoft.

And Elon was not about it.